The Progressive Era
Trends and Themes of the Era
- Backlash against the excesses and corruption
of the Industrial Revolution led to a fervor for reform. Reform
stretched across economic, environmental, social, and racial lines.
- In foreign affairs through the first half of the Progressive
Era,the U.S. continued to assert its power through militaristic
and economic means, particularly in the Western Hemisphere. Woodrow
Wilson rejected this aggressive foreign policy in favor of a more
idealistic one, but the outbreak of World War I interrupted his
plans.
